Devices for stacking printed products are generally known, for example, from British Patent Specification No. 1,568,752. In the above British patent, the section of the conveyor directly delivering printed products to the stack compartment is arranged underneath the preceding section and has a virtually opposite conveying direction in relation to the latter. Thus, the printed products therefore arrive in the stack compartment with a leading edge which was the trailing edge on the preceding section of the conveyor. This is advantageous whenever the arriving printed products arrive in a conventional imbricated formation, in which the leading edge of the printed products is formed by the fold, while the opposite edge is a so-called cut edge. Consequently, in the above known apparatus, the more critical edge of the printed products, namely the fold, is prevented from striking the stop rails limiting the stack compartment on arrival in the stack equipment. Moreover, the conveying direction of both sections of the conveyor is always essentially at right angles to the leading edge and the trailing edge of the printing products. This has the consequence that, on arrival in the stack compartment, only the respective leading edge strikes the opposite stop rail and is thereby aligned in the stack being formed, while the side edges remain unguided on arrival in the stack compartment and consequently are not automatically aligned. Thus, side aligners, which align the side edges of the arriving printing products with respect to one another are necessary in the stack compartment and/or on the section of the conveyor entering the latter in order to produce a neat, right-parallelepipedal stack.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to design stacking apparatus so that a neat, right-parallelepipedal stack is produced without additional technical measures.